User:AaronPeterson

Hello,

I'm Aaron Peterson, my home page is http://escargot.icehouse.net . I plan to make my living delpoying wiki solutions.

 MrDarkUser on IRC
 509.332.7697  (Pullman, WA USA)
 ICQ 2302806

 1220 NE Myrtle St
 Pullman WA 99163

 My favorite email gets: incinerated at yahoo
 (you can add the dot com)

Wiki Experience

How I got into wikis

/How i got into wikis

sites (in timeline order)

• refined my philosophy at: www.openwiki.org (defunct) (owner unknown, my content vanished!)
• I rearranged the fresco wiki.. http://wiki.fresco.org ... and most of my changes are still in effect!
• Major Contributor to: http://www.subverted.net/wakka
• Contributor and Basher of: http://wiki.linuxquestions.org
• Operator of: http://escargot.icehouse.net/mediawiki

Wiki Goals

And, I am starting a project called Fractodendron, which aims to create, or encourage development of a distributed P2P server system for the masses. (my projects are at my wiki, linked to above)

I am planning to base my project on a wiki, and I should know the wiki very well, and make sure that others can use it very well too.

Wiki Habits

loner

I have been a lone wikier, and have little experience working with others. I have some of my own terminology, and have spend many, many hours thinking about wikis. I am used to being unopposed, however, I believe that I am naturally well tempered, but I may speak harshly or crudely when positioned in a WikiWar. I will, however, at the same time be considering what I can consede.

spelling

I don't really care for spending lots of time correcting spelling. I will use Konqueror for it's spell checker if need be. (even though it's always loading pages from URLs in the clipboard, and poping up invalid URL messages)

relations

I tend to view many things as being relaited, even when others don't. I would prefer to be given a chance, as I can explain the connection, or subtleties of meaning.

keeps content

I always attempt to find a place for content on the web site, and or keep content live on another page. (however I finally learned that one should click on the date in the page history to view the older version of the page... and this isn't as important for me now) however, live pages are more respectfull to a previous author.

offline major revisions

I try to develop new versions of high trafic pages on a prototype page, then make the move in one quick move, with the old site a wikilink away.

links to related content at top of page

navigation is a very important issue, I want categories to be at the top of the page! grr.... however! due to the wonders of css, I should be able to make categories float at the top of the page. (I hope)

I don't like having to scroll a long way to find the related content, that I was really searching for.

Wiki Philosophy

My philosophy doesn't entirely match those of wikimedia's contributers, however, we seem to be working ok together, and i hope to be swayed, and sway a few people back.

I have done some edits, like moved the full file list to it's own page, because I thought it was too long. I sorta waffled on this item, but... onto my philosophy:

Page length

A wiki article for knowledge bases shouldn't be more than 3 printed pages long.

A wiki article for an encylopedia page... shouldn't be much longer.

There should be lots of pages, with little duplication. This gets inconvienient when one wishes to print an entire procedure, or guide book, so I have listed in my desired features a mechanism to take care of this common problem.

Speed

Wikis should be very quick to navigate, and to develop. I mostly don't want to care about server speed... so I'm interested in creating a P2P wiki system that aleviates this problem.

Apropriateness of Wikis

I believe that a wiki should be able to take the role of CMS software, and all the other things mediawiki is listed as not being, as listed in Wiki uses

Case insensitivity

I am constantly bothered by wikimedia's case sensitivity. I think that it was choses out of development ease, and should be reserved for certain namespaces.

namespaces

I think all articles should start in the main namespace, and get moved as neccissary to the "appropriate" namespace when needed. disambiguation pages are not bad things.

Navigation at top

Table of Contents

The table of contents feature is very very cool. It, by default, appears at the top of the page, and allows for quick access to parts of a long page. I, however, do not like long pages, as it leads to recreation of work... but it happens, and this is a way to deal with it.

Categories

I will be editing my css style sheet to place category listings at the tops of pages. If category pages are at the top of pages, it will help people find the related article quicker, and avoid recreation of work.

Member Of

For pages where it's not appropriate to place it into a category, one should place a member of:WikiLink at the top of the page, so one can get to the appropriate category. Most of the time, one should just put the page into the category, however, a problem arises when a category gets too full, and a sub category better describes the page in question.

Whitespace

A wiki needs whitespace between paragraphs to help people sort the content of a wiki. WikiMedia also allows editing of header sections, which makes headers very important for very long lists. Very long lists also get a quick index automatically at the top! which is very helpfull for navigation

Use summarizing headers and titles / outlines

The table of contents, of headers in this wiki are absolutely fantastic. The header should contain enough information to express your idea, or remind people instanty of your idea if it is very complex.

My account at slashdot, ( aaron_pet ), uses the signature: Please use informative/summarizing subject lines.

This includes in talk pages, and email, instead of replying with just a Re:(former topic) reply with "(summary of my answer) Re: (former topic). (note: This will NOT break properly threaded mailing lists!, as they use a specific mail header to sort, rather than the subject line!)

If the subject line gets too long, start using... abreviated language, or shorthand(leave out vowels), or just make a string fo the first letters... example: Re: (former topic) --> (something that is probably too long and should be thought about more type of reply) Re: ft

Most Desired Features

• The subway station and The train man -- a name for the system that can do seamless wikipedia upgrades.
• Case insensitivity in wiki links. A MUST FIX for me to
• BackLinks with exclusion possibility is can take care of nested category problems.
• newline as newline
• customizable wikitags -- I want to have a few be "user defined", maybe based on category. or a howto to hack a few that I don't use.. THIS WOULD FIX A LOT OF FEATURE REQUESTS SATISFACTORALLY
• page ordering -- a list of links, on one page should be able to serve as a "seed" for creating a previous and next button, for documentation, and long lists.
• collapsing text boxes -- so a summary can be shown all the time, and a detailed explanation can be expanded -- like the table of contents feature.. but more integrated.
• share watchlists -- it should be possible to show your watchlist, it is a possible privacy issue though
• fork page -- (this page reminded me of the idea) -- basically a way to end flame wars, and could possibly build on the same history, saving a lot of diskspace on a mature page, and maintaining heiratige... or liniage information...
• BackLinks -- I'm getting along ok with categories though...
• Talk Merging -- like another thing that I just wrote, but merge talk pages with content page on a single click

Features found that were on the list

• nested categories -- categories are great, but one should be able to list under another one, as there are nearly as many possible categories as there are artilces... my convention of using backlinks is more scalable though... but.. nested categories is already a feature of MediaWiki! horrah!